The Ring of the Dark Age of Technology
by gigletes
Summary: When a daemonic device throws a Techmarine of the Iron Hands Space Marine chapter over 38,000 years into the past, and possibly to a different dimension altogether, the Human-Covenant War changes entirely, and not in favor of the filthy Xenos. The war's going badly, and humanity could use the help - but the Iron Hands are not well, and this one is less well than most.
1. Chapter 1

**739.M41**

**Manufactorum Theta-Phi 15, Capitol Continent, Esteran Secundus, Esteran System, Thule Sector, Segmentum Obscurus, Imperium of Man**

Bolter fire and the high, piercing whine of power armor were the only sounds. A battle was usually a noisy affair, with war cries and the sounds of wounded and dying men all under the constant chatter of men or aliens in a stressful, high pressure situation. Not a battle between the Adeptus Astartes of the Iron Hands chapter and the Adeptus Mechanicus' slave-soldiers. Skitarii were not known for their humanity, and the Iron Hands hardly even started human. Even fallen Skitarii, in the service of the Dark Gods of Chaos, communicated in binharic. A corrupted, twisted form of it, but still recognizably binharic.

He hated it more than any other language he had ever heard. Ferenk Verrn was a Techmarine, a servant of the holy Omnissiah. He was a veteran of hundreds or perhaps thousands of battles, and was familiar with the total silence the Iron Hands operated in. Having their enemy operate in a similar fashion was new, but being able to hear their hidden dialogues in a corrupted form of his own language, having them forced upon him by daemonically boosted voxcasters was both new and awful. The Omnissiah only knew what had forced these Skitarii into servitude to a new master, but the Iron Hands of Clan Vurgaan were there to fix it.

Ferenk watched as Clade Vaur, the tactical squad assigned to support him, cleared the cavernous assembly hall, filled with tables and chairs once used by the sprawling manufactorum worker population. Sergeant Talrok Vaur, in his ancient set of Cataphractii plate, went up the middle, scything aside the Vanguard in his path, ignoring with contemptuous ease the rads infused into their bodies and weaponry. His nine other marines flanked him, taking measured, simultaneous steps and swiveling their torsos to deliver aimed bolter fire. Ferenk watched as one marine, his armor swelled with augmetics, turned his torso 180 degrees to engage a squad of Sicarians that dropped from a vent.

As the marine took down a pair of the corrupted Skitarii with his bolter, Ferenk analyzed the situation. His cogitators clacked, analyzing the information provided by his armor sensors and implants and spitting out a response.

_++ Mission potentially compromised by presence of new threat. Engagement advised ++_

That was clear enough to Ferenk.

Striding out of the shadows that had concealed his heavily modified rust-red Mark VIII artificer armor, Ferenk raised his Storm Bolter with his right hand, supported it with a servo-arm, and, working left to right, put a bolt into the neck of every remaining Sicarian in the space of less than a second. Had he been capable of satisfaction, he would have felt it.

A blurt of binharic cant over the Clave noosphere was temporarily clear over the background of angry corrupted binary.

_The next room is our objective._ As short and to the point as could be expected of a century-long veteran of the Iron Hands. Ferenk switched his gaze without moving his body, shifting his view from his front-facing augmetic eyes staring through his helmet visor to the servo-arm holding his axe, giving him an excellent view of the hall and the terse Veteran Sergeant. At the far end of the hall was a pair of double doors, from floor to ceiling measuring over ten meters. They led to nothing more than another non-descript dining area, but for some inscrutable reason, the chaos cult that had subverted the local Skitarii and slaughtered the workers and tech priests that lived and worked on the continent had chosen this room for the apparently massive voxcast apparatus that was broadcasting corrupt doctrina imperatives and broken scraps of holy machine codes. The broadcast could be felt by machines and adepts across the planet, and as a result, both had been acting up. The native Skitarii forces had attempted to deal with the insurrection and had taken 100% casualties for their trouble. So the Iron Hands had come.

Ferenk and Clade Vaur advanced. He crossed the gore-strewn floor of the hall, overturned tables and other furniture cracking under his heavy strides. The heavy thumps and consistent chatter of the marines ahead of him was a familiar background noise, the blurts and clicks a pleasant counterpoint to the eternal and infernal background noise of staticky daemonic noise. As the tactical marines neared the door, eight scattered to each side of the door, the one with the heavy bolter kneeled and braced his weapon so he could fire into the next room without obstruction, and Veteran Sergeant Vaur strode up to the door and braced his massive power fist against it, ready to batter it down. Without turning around, he stopped, waiting for Ferenk to get into position.

_We are ready to breach, Brother Techmarine._ Ferenk stopped behind the bulky Terminator armor and signaled back with a noospheric acknowledgement paired with a time code, letting the squad know that he would need exactly five minutes to set up.

The servo arm bracing his Storm Bolter swung back behind him and locked the weapon into the slot on his servo-harness. Another servo arm retrieved his Omnissian Axe, a third brought forward a melta charge, and the original folded back and retrieved his vox-array. Ferenk set himself to setting up the confusing array of antenna, dataslates, and other esoteric devices designed to get at transmission from under all the layers of metal and manufactorum all the way to the orbiting battle-barge Kalach.

Four minutes after getting set up, no Iron Hand had moved, but the vox report had been entirely uploaded and Ferenk was ready. He stowed the vox-array and his servo arms, brought forward his flamer, plasma cutter, storm bolter, and Omnissian Axe, and placed the melta charge on the door.

_Breach._ He took a step back and triggered the charge. The door dissolved in a pile of slag and sparks, and Vaur and his squad charged in.

Ferenk's incredibly sensitive aural implants could, when properly calibrated, allow him to hear a tunneling Ambull kilometers away. They were completely unnecessary to hear the daemonic screeching and extremely rapid bolter-fire. He moved into the room and readied his weapons, just in time to see the lead tactical marine have his entire left arm sheared off by a daemonette's claw hand. The Slaaneshi daemon drove another spiked arm through the marine's helm, through his brain. Before the twisted monstrosity could pull its weapon out of the sparking, ruined helm, the marine brought his combat knife around and severed the arm, then its head. Several other daemonettes swarmed over their sister's corpse, and Ferenk opened up with both his Storm Bolter and his flamer, burning and blowing up the majority of the onrushing daemons, scything down the few remaining with his axe.

Ferenk ran the numbers through his cogitation implants, and the calculus was… less than encouraging.

_++ Unknown threat. Caution advised. Priority: Complete the mission ++_

More daemonettes were flooding out of the far door, the massive room rapidly filling with screaming horrors. Despite their terrifying visage, the Iron Hands were unaffected. Nothing can manipulate the emotions of that which has none, after all, and most Iron Hands Vaur's age had shed all the weakness of their flesh. Even the younger tactical marines, none of them more than a century old, were at least mostly augmetic. Ferenk's own four centuries had left him unsure if he even had any flesh left. To find out would require removing his armor, and, following the example of Warleader Kristos, he had had his armor combined with his augmetics. The daemonettes' psychic aura was entirely ineffective.

The telekinetics of the Keeper of Secrets behind the daemonettes were a different matter. Another tactical marine was lifted into the air, limbs splayed, and began to shudder before he fell apart in a spray of sparks and gore, the Greater Daemon laughing and contorting in impossible ways. Ferenk didn't have to consult his cogitators for this. He had to kill the daemon and get to the -

Only then did he notice the biomechanical monstrosity in the middle of the room, occluded by the swarm of lesser daemons, and glowing with a baleful pink energy. It stretched from floor to ceiling, with tendrils of muscle fiber and mechadendrites spreading across both surfaces and suspending the massive canister of flesh in the middle. The Keeper of Secrets was guarding it, and doing so quite effectively. A massive tendril swung directly at Ferenk, bowling over another tactical marine on the way. Before it hit him, however, he raised his axe and bisected it, the tip flying off to impact the opposite wall. The massive creature screeched, its smile becoming slightly more fixed, and it turned toward the techmarine.

The Iron Hands fell back in response to a binharic bleep from their sergeant, forming a half-circle in front of their sergeant, and Ferenk moved up to engage the daemon in close combat. He raised his axe and walked forward, pumping heavy mass-reactive rounds into the Keeper, the tactical marines following suit, and Vaur prepared his back-mounted Cyclone missile launcher. Ferenk swung his axe, severing one of the daemons multitudinous arms, and then raised a servo-arm to block an incoming strike. The daemon shrieked and sent a blast of psychic energy at the tactical squad, blasting the marine group across the room and forcing Veteran Sergeant Vaur back nearly a meter.

The cogitators, unprompted, offered another take.

_++ Kill the daemon and destroy the device. ++_

Ferenk didn't have time to worry about restless machine spirits. He took his axe and drove it straight down, cutting through the daemon's head and nearly down to the end of its torso before its weight and servo-induced momentum ended.

_Good kill, Brother Techmarine._ The sergeant and his marines fanned out once more, taking down daemonettes left and right. Now destroy the device. Ferenk was entirely in agreement, and indicated so through the noosphere.

One of his servo arms rose from his harness and grabbed a second melta bomb, and he painstakingly worked his way through a crowd of daemons and up the biomechanical slope to the core of the machine. As he neared the glowing core, it began to brighten and hum. He bashed his way through the horde of daemons, and threw the charge into the device. The glow wavered, then broke, and Ferenk turned and began working his way down the slope. Then the charge went off and Ferenk felt his body moving as the blast blew him across the room, until he slammed into the opposite wall. Or at least he should have, but against all logic, instead of hitting the wall, he continued moving, and the world turned red, then pink, then black.


	2. Chapter 2

Hi! I'm Gigletes, machine fanboy and general nerd! Just wanted to thank everyone who has read and is reading. At the end will be an author's note, worth reading, probably.

* * *

**552.M3**

**Near Installation 04, Threshold, Soell System, Orion Arm, Milky Way**

Master Chief Petty Officer John-117 stepped out of the cryo-room doors and followed the cryo tech. For approximately ten feet, until the door ahead of them exploded and the tech's mangled body was thrown far down the hall. That was pretty typical of his month, really. First Reach, now this.

He doubled back, avoiding the merrily burning passage through the recently blown-up doors, and went through a confusing series of passages with constant explosions and gun fights around him. Emerging into a passageway, he found his first friendlies Directly to his right, a few ratings and Marines were trading fire with an indeterminate foe down a hall. There wasn't anything the Chief could do unarmed, and he had explicit orders to head to the bridge, so he continued onward, ducking what he could and trusting his shields to take the rest. He entered a maze of piping and access corridors and was on his way, trusting his internal map of the ship to get him to the bridge.

Ten minutes later it was brutally clear that either the ship or his mental map was deficient, because the Master Chief was lost. He'd picked up an assault rifle and a Magnum along the way, but he was still as far from the bridge as he'd started. Just as he was beginning to lose hope, he spotted a sign for a main thoroughfare, and followed it into a large room, filled with an almost equally large set of bizarre armor.

Master Chief could hardly believe that the thing in front of him was real. Spartans were far taller than normal humans - the Chief himself was just over seven feet tall - but this thing was massive, even taller than most Elites. It was also incredibly wide, and built out of a material that had proven impressively resistant to his initial few panicked shots. The bullets had simply bounced off the sloped pauldron, hardly even disturbing the dark-red paint. The thing was human shaped, but an exaggeratedly broad and thick human, even considering the breadth of the armor itself. Its red paint was pitted and scarred, and a large gash ran down the breastplate, bisecting the emblem of a skull surrounded by a cog. To Master Chief's trained eye, it had clearly been in combat lately, with someone other than himself. He gathered himself and began to circle the thing, keeping his weapon trained on it, and noticed that although the weapon in his right hand was recognizably a gun, even if it was outsized, bulky, and appeared to have double barrels, the weapon in his left was unfamiliar except from his historical training.

An axe. An absolutely massive axe, possibly taller than the Chief himself, and in the center of the blade that same skull and cog symbol. As he circled around, counterclockwise from his starting position in front of the behemoth, he noticed that the monster's left pauldron had a different device - a white hand on a background of black.

The odd symbology was rapidly overshadowed by the backpack, or… whatever it was attached to the armor's rear. Spreading out of it were three mechanical arms, the same color as the armor, with forklift-like grabbing devices on the end. Mounted on the backpack itself was another gun, although this one was like nothing he'd ever seen.

The Chief's consideration of the oddness of the gun was abruptly interrupted, however, when a door on the other side of the room opened. Through it poured a squad of Covenant troops, Grunts and Jackals and a pair of Elite Minors. The Chief ducked behind the suit and began firing at the grunts, taking two down with a quick burst from his assault rifle before the rest got into cover.

Chief continued to trade fire with the aliens, bullets sparking around the door and occasionally finding their mark as he huddled behind the hulking armor, plasma and needles sparking off the thick plate. The Master Chief was running low on ammo, so he dropped his rifle and pulled out his pistol, taking slow, measured shots, finishing off the last Grunt and hitting a Jackal in the leg. Then a glowing ball of sparking blue flew through the air and stuck to the wall right next to him. _Shit_.

He dove to the side, putting the leviathan between him and the grenade, just in time to catch a pair of needles that rebounded off his shield just in front of his visor. He slid across the floor, hitting the opposite wall just as the grenade detonated. The blue flash filled the room and blinded him for a few seconds.

As he lay there, blinking and waiting for his most important sense to return, Chief wondered why he could no longer feel the pressure of enemy fire impacting his shield. As a matter of fact, he couldn't hear it, either. And by the time his eyes adapted, the armor was entirely gone, with no trace of it having ever been there remaining. He slowly got up, gathered himself, and looked around the corner into the hallway the Covies had come in through.

Iron Hands were supposed to be emotionless, more machine than man, and to the outside world, that is what they seemed. But all Iron Hands knew a secret. It was never discussed, never admitted aloud, but every Iron Hand knew, and they all knew the others knew as well.

Iron Hands get angry.

The fatal flaw of Ferrus Manus, the emotion that ended with his head separated from his shoulders at the hands of one he called brother, was the Achilles heel of the entire chapter, and despite ten thousand years of trying to conquer and eradicate it, they had so far failed. No matter how much of an Iron Hand's body was replaced with augmetics, no matter how little of the weakness of the flesh remained on their frame, the one emotion that every Iron Hand felt was anger.

Ferenk Verrn had fought corrupted Skitarii and Lesser and Greater Daemons of Slaanesh, been thrown through a portal to who knows where who knows when, and then stuck, his augmetics and armor alike nonfunctional, forced to merely observe as the green runt in oddly proportioned flak armor studied him, until a grenade thrown by a filthy xenos of a type unknown to him shook him out of his paralysis, somehow.

He was very, very angry.

It took him five seconds to cross the room and charge his way into the ranks of the aliens, slamming his oversized pauldron into the face of a blue-clad large alien., right through the apparent energy shield he had. He thought it similar to that of an Iron Halo, but it was xenotech, and thus not worth considering. As his momentum carried him past the first rank, he swung his Omnissian axe, taking an arm and an oddly-shaped plasma weapon from the other big one. It roared and charged after him, but slipped on a pool of its comrades blood. The thing staggered and then fell onto a heap, which Ferenk promptly punched two .75 caliber explosive rounds into. The heap gave a satisfying double-thwack, then exploded. Ferenk's anger was nearly assuaged.

The only two Xenos left were the two avian ones that reminded him of the Tau's mercenaries, the ones who were known for consuming their foes. He hated them only slightly more after making that connection. Even an Iron Hand has limits.

He advanced on them, and they locked together their shields and began spraying what looked like low-powered plasma at him. It merely reflected off his armor as it had when he was being used as cover. He extended a pair of servo arms and smashed the energy shields, sending the bird-like aliens flying and leaving him with a clean shot for his Storm Bolter, which he took. He almost decided to take them on in close combat, but the calculus cogitators mounted in his armor had been screaming about inefficiency since his armor had reawoken. He had indulged enough, so he merely fired a pair of bolts and ended it.

The corridor was filled with blood. Purple and blue, the colors of the Covenant, was scattered everywhere, on floors, walls, corpses, even the roof. The Chief had seen more blood with more corpses, but never had he seen an Elite so thoroughly disassembled. One was smashed nearly flat, another way lying on the floor in a pile of shredded flesh and armor, and what appeared to be a pair of Jackals were off to one side, both with massive holes in their abdomens that made it look like they had swallowed grenades. And in the middle of it all, the red-clad giant, massive and blood-spattered, its eyes glowing bright red.

The armored giant raised its gore-splattered axe, pointed it at the Chief, and bellowed a challenge in a curiously robotic voice and a language that the Master Chief didn't even slightly understand despite his knowledge of most human languages, followed by a quick blurt of static and a curiously melodic but atonal note series. The Chief merely froze, then raised his hands to show he was unarmed (a state of affairs he deeply regretted, all of a sudden). He wasn't sure what the massive thing wanted from him, but he was pretty sure he wouldn't like it.

Ferenk just wanted the blasted thing to take off its helmet. He thought it was a human, despite its impressive height, and judging by the fluidity with which it used its clearly-powered armor, probably one that was at least slightly enhanced with something similar to his own Black Carapace. He had to be sure, however, and he'd prefer not to kill the thing. Disrespectful of an Astartes or not, the soldier had proved itself against the smaller enemies, and would likely be able to provide useful intelligence. He gestured to his own helmet with a servo arm, then with his Storm Bolter and the arm attached to that.

The behemoth pointed to its helmet with one of its freaky machine-arms, then with its two-barreled cannon. Chief was farely sure he understood what it wanted, so he reached up - slowly, and very deliberately - and removed his helmet.

"Hi."

* * *

Thanks for reading! I'd like to address a few concerns really quickly. The most common is that Ferenk will just ally himself to the UNSC immediately despite their near-constant heresy. This is not the case. While the Iron Hands don't particularly care for the doctrines of the Ecclesiarchy one way or another, the tenets of the Cult Mechanicus are a completely different matter. Abominable Intelligence is one of the reasons the Cult was founded. This is not something that will be easy (or maybe possible) for Ferenk to overlook. Apart from that, he won't be buddy-buddy with the UNSC soon if ever; Iron Hands have Techmarines; and the dialogue is fixed. Thanks for reading!


	3. Chapter 3

This was far, _far_ more of a pain to write than it should've been. Massively sorry for the delay.

* * *

**552.M3**

**Bridge, UNSC Pillar of Autumn, Near Installation 04, Threshold, Soell System, Orion Arm, Milky Way**

The bridge of the Pillar was hectic and crowded as usual. Captain Jacob Keyes, current and, he suspected, final master and commander of the Pillar of Autumn could hardly keep up with the hustle and bustle of his bridge crew, trying to manage the running battle with a dozen Covenant capital ships and many more fighters. Keyes had issued his orders and now had very little to do, just wait for the right moment to tell his crew to abandon ship. His beautiful ship, which had brought them all the way from Reach and was now dying at the hands of the fucking Covenant.

Keyes turned from his pondering and faced the AI pedestal, currently occupied by Cortana's calculation filled avatar. She was focused, concentrating on defending the ship and getting it as close to the ring as possible before they ditched.

She wouldn't be for long, though. Keyes had made his decision the second the first Covie breaching charge blew a hole through his hull. He would comply with the Cole Protocol, but Cortana was too valuable to simply wipe, so he would send her down to the ring with the Master Chief.

Another impact shook the ship, and Keyes turned back to the entrance. Where was the Chief? He was supposed to be here by now. Covenant boarding parties could have slowed him down, but shouldn't have slowed him this much. What could have held him up?

The answer to that question backhanded another so-called Jackal across the hall with his gun hand and, pivoting, scythed another in two with his axe. Actually, both scythed and axe were the wrong words - scythed implied a clean slice, not the gaping hole produced by the massive Astartes-scale axe, and the Kroot-like alien was most certainly in more than two pieces. Satisfied that these two were down, Ferenk turned towards his maybe-ally, the large human or small Thunder Warrior in the green scout armor.

Ferenk knew his temporary Ally wasn't a Thunder Warrior, or an Astartes. He also knew full well this was no baseline human. When he'd taken off his helmet, Ferenk had inspected him very carefully to ensure he was at least in the pattern created by the Omnissiah, the same way Astartes were once mortals and now more. The man, apart from his dimensions, was as convincingly human as any guardsman Ferenk had ever met, and had the scars to rival a Catachan. He also had a primitive and limited Black Carapace and a set of armor that seemed to the Techmarine's trained eye to be some kind of hybrid of flak, tactical dreadnought, and power armor - low powered, only lightly armored, but with strength enhancement, significant sensor and cogitation facilities, and with a shield system vaguely similar to that of the tall, four-jawed aliens that his new comrade referred to as Elites. The last was the most impressive feature. It was capable of taking an incredible amount of damage for such a small, low powered system. It wasn't on the level of Terminator plate's shielding, but seemed to be about the equivalent of an Iron Halo spread across the entirety of the armor.

It wasn't always enough, though. Ferenk turned just in time to watch a massive blast of plasma from a Grunt's plasma weapon slam into his shields, and the invisible barrier gave way with a cursory pop. The rest of the plasma packet splashed across his armor, scorching it and probably raising the temperature inside by twenty degrees. The so-called Master Chief (Chief had informed him that it was a rank, similar in stature to but higher than a sergeant) didn't even flinch. What he did do was drop his assault rifle in favor of his pistol and shoot the Grunt that had shot him, downing him with one head and two body shots. That left just one Elite. The xeno loosed a flurry of plasma bolts from its oddly shaped rifle, whether at him or the Chief, Ferenk couldn't tell. The bolts hit neither of them. Ferenk punished the Elite's inaccuracy with a pair of bolts. The first brought down his shield and the second went through his armor and into his chest cavity before the mass sensors decided that they were ready and triggered the explosive charge.

Ferenk surveyed the scene with what could have been pride in a being with emotions. This skirmish was just like the previous five, and the five before that. Individual Covenant boarding parties had encountered the pair and been wiped out. They had killed scores of Xenos, working separately but near each other. The Master Chief was the equivalent of any Aspirant or Scout Ferenk had ever known, and gave the average non-Iron Hand Tactical Marine he'd worked with a run for their money. Separate but near they had fought their way to the bridge of this ship, where the Chief would convene with the captain of the vessel and concoct a plan to drive the Covenant off his ship.

Ferenk had resolved to stay outside and allow the smaller soldier to discuss the plan with his captain. After all, it never hurt to obtain intelligence while ensuring no-one else knew you had, even if the intelligence was on allies. Ferenk's artificial senses could detect any Imperial assassin through two walls, but he had no intention of letting anyone around him know that.

Despite their human visage, and apparent hatred for the Xenos, the mortals around him spoke a language like nothing he'd ever heard. Some of it was maddeningly familiar, some words close to words in both Gothic languages.

Luckily, their computers and technology were much simpler. It was also primitive. The humans he'd seen so far had carried exclusively autoguns and some shotguns. Not a lasgun among them - just chemical propellants and what his spectrometer said were lead bullets.

Ferenk had, during a lull in the fighting, simply extended a mechadendrite, configured it properly, and plugged into the helmet of a dead soldier. From there he'd set his cogitators to deciphering the language of first the primitive device, and from there the language of the mortals around him. In less time than it took for them to find the next packet of boarders, he'd deciphered the "English" spoken by the humans in this region and promptly shocked the Master Chief by inquiring after the "Magos Enginarium" of this ship.

Once an explanation of what exactly a "Magos" was had been attempted and discarded, a frustrated Ferenk instead asked for the captain. Chief was too relieved to hear familiar terminology to question exactly why his new comrade (Ferenk? What kind of name was that?) wanted to see his captain. The Chief had explained that the bridge, where they were headed (prompting an explanation that they were headed to a control room, not to a road over a river), was where the captain would be. There, Ferenk could learn what they were fighting, as could the Chief. All they knew for now was that the Pillar was extremely compromised.

But now…

Now the captain was explaining all that had transpired to the Master Chief, and it was extremely enlightening.

"Captain Keyes." Ferenk heard fabric rustle and an unfamiliar voice responded.

"Good to see you, Master Chief. Things aren't going well. Cortana did her best, but we never really had a chance." A third voice, this one female and vaguely arrogant to Ferenk's ear, chimed in, presumably the aforementioned 'Cortana.'

"A dozen Covenant superior battleships against a single Halcyon-class cruiser. With those odds I'm content with three- make that four kills. Sleep well?"

"No thanks to your driving, yes. Captain Keyes, I f-"

A massive blast rocked the ship, slamming a single pauldron into the bulkhead next to it and leaving a cog-shaped indent in the solid wall. Ferenk drew his pistol and readied his axe, but there were no enemies nearby. It must have been more ship fire from the Xenos warships apparently harrying the Autumn.

"Sorry, Chief, but there's no time. I'm initiating the Cole Protocol, and Article Two means you have to take Cortana along. I'm going to try to put her down on the surface of the object. You… you'll have to find your own way out. Good luck."

"Yes, sir."

"Cortana - eject yourself."

"How dare you?" Ferenk could hear the smug grin. He did not like this one. He didn't have enough patience to deal with flesh-forms who thought themselves witty.

"Here, Chief. Take her. Keep her safe."

"Thank you, captain. And sir - it was an honor."

"Likewise. Now get out. I'll see you on the surface."

The bridge doors swished open, and an apparently preoccupied Master Chief strode right past Ferenk.

Ferenk directed a mechadendrite to look through the bridge doors, and nearly lost it when the doors abruptly clanged together, the ship shaking once again.

At the other end of the corridor, the doors began to smoke and heat. The Chief unslung his weapon, and Ferenk spoke.

"Hostiles."


	4. Chapter 3 - Interlude

**552.M3**

**The skies above Tribute, Tribute, Epsilon Eridani System, Orion Arm, Milky Way**

Tribute was burning. The Epsilon Eridani system was chock-full of Covenant ships, with the few remaining UNSC ships semi-intact hulks bleeding atmosphere and bodies. The greatest redoubt of human civilization had fallen.

The Covenant were actively glassing essentially all of Reach. Tribute was getting off easier, with only population centers being glassed. Given Covenant thoroughness, however, that still meant most of the planet. After all, Tribute was twelve years to the month from celebrating the 200th anniversary of its colonization.

While not the equal of the nearly two hundred ships over Reach, the Fleet of Enduring Piety tasked with the destruction of Tribute still measured almost a hundred warships. The sky was blotted out over major cities, humans fleeing despite the fact that the Covenant were everywhere. For the people of Tribute, there was no escape.

Aboard the flag bridge of a titanic CSO-class supercarrier, the silent contemplation of the religious rituals surrounding the glassing of a world were suddenly interrupted by screaming, whooping alarms. The crew of the kilometers-long ship sprang into action.

"Slipspace signature detected, Fleetmaster." The Sangheili sensor officer was rapidly adjusting his instruments, but he didn't hesitate to report what he knew. Just how Fleetmaster Syra 'Lacamee had trained his bridge crew.

"What is it, Thare?" It wasn't hard to hear 'Lacamee, even over the screaming alarms. Sangheili of his rank tended to be… loud.

"Unknown, Fleetmaster. The rupture opened a few thousand [kilometers] off our starboard bow. Nothing has come through yet."

"Keep an eye on it." 'Lacamee turned to issue orders through his subordinates. "Redeploy the 111th Division to cover the rupture. Task a few destroyers to take their place in the purification. I want battlecruisers covering that Slipspace entrance."

"Yes, Fleetmaster. It will be done."

Icons on the convoluted central holo-tank began to shift as his orders were carried out. Squadrons of ships weighing millions of tons, all at his disposal. 'Lacamee wasn't prone to introspection, but even so, the beauty of the purification was almost too much.

"Shipmaster!" The sensor officer's calm tone was gone. 'Lacamee whirled towards his inferior, then towards the holo-tank the officer pointed towards. Detailed inside was a titanic ship emerging from the rapidly-expanding Slipspace portal. The gigantic ship was at least the length of 'Lacamee's own supercarrier.

And it wasn't yet through the portal.

Before it had fully emerged, the gigantic ship began to fire. The first shots were massive shells, similar in form to the human MAC shells — but judging by the massive clouds of debris and smoke pulled behind them, propelled quite differently. Then batteries of energy weapons, similar superficially to the Covenant's own plasma projectors but more focused. Within a minute a CRS-class light cruiser had been battered to bits by absurdly massive shells and a CPV-class had been torn apart by streams of coherent energy.

Eventually, 'Lacamee was able to regain control of his fleet and begin targeting the leviathan vessel. Unfortunately for him, he hadn't been paying enough attention.

The vessel had finally pulled through the Slipspace portal, revealing nearly 40 kilometers of ornamented, insignia studded hull, and an absurd number of statues for a ship meant for combat. It also revealed six massive baffles, each one with a slight blue glow inside. 'Lacamee decided to target its apparently unprotected engines. He directed his own ship's weapons personally.

The plasma shots began to rain down on the ornamented prow of the unknown vessel. 'Lacamee expected the boiling and melting that was typical of human ships (what else could this be but a human ship?). Instead, the plasma splashed across an unseen field kilometers from the hull. 'Lacamee cursed in Sangheili.

"No damage?" His officers merely made gestures of negation. "Gah. Get us closer, then!"

The massive ship's engines flared, and it began to accelerate away from the covenant ships. It kept firing, though, and another cruiser fell to bits, torn apart by its own engine force when a lucky hit shattered its spine. A CCS-class approached too close and was reduced to component subatomic particles by whatever field surrounded the enemy ship. One of 'Lacamee's bridge officers, the son of a Kaidon, swiveled in his chair and shouted towards the center of the bridge platform.

"Sir! Fleetmaster! When _Purity of Fire_ hit the enemy shields, they flickered off!"

'Lacamee had been unimpressed with the whelp's past performance, but he was ready to accept just about any ideas.

"How can you tell?" he snapped.

"Purity's final salvo made it through." He indicated a region of scarring on the enemy vessel's starboard flank. "They did some damage!"

'Lacamee blinked, then bent to type something into his console. A CAR-class frigate suddenly spun and dove straight at the enemy ship. Before it could react, the frigate impacted its shields and was annihilated like _Purity_.

Immediately before it impacted the fleet launched a full salvo of plasma. Thousands of motes shot through the void and most made it through before the shield returned. They burned through the ship, leaving melted pools of metal on the surface and setting fires where enough hit to make it through massive armor.

Even that wasn't enough. 'Lacamee gnashed his jaws, spit flying as evidence of his fury. Not enough damage to even slow it, much less cripple it. The energy weapons reached out and took yet another CCS-class on the Great Journey.

But the Covenant fleet had at least gotten it to take them seriously. Slowly, ponderously, it turned around. As 'Lacamee watched, the viewscreen of his console showed a vague coalescence of light around the ship. The holo-tank showed nothing - it wasn't detectable by sensors. But it showed up just fine on camera…

The light turned red, and the ill-defined silhouette of an eight-pointed star was visible for just a moment. Then an incredible screaming noise rocketed through the Fleetmaster's head. His last view was the star growing brighter, then he fell. He was out before he hit the ground.

The same was true for the rest of the crew of the Fleet of Enduring Piety. Unggoy, Kig-Yar, Yanme'e, and Sangheili - none were immune. It was a mercy, though. The gigantic ship flared white soon after, the energies gathered around it reaching critical mass. They pulsed, once, twice, then exploded outwards. The shell of unearthly energy shattered ship after ship. It simply burned through Tribute's atmosphere, scorching the planet. Observers as far as Reach saw a bright flash seconds before the event itself - violating every law of causality and the speed of light itself.

For all intents and purposes, the Fleet of Enduring Piety had ceased to exist the moment the angular ship had began to tap into the Empyrean. The only living beings still alive were the souls hardy enough to survive the screech from the Daemon that powered the unholy ship's energy weapon, and lucky enough to be on a ship large enough to at least somewhat withstand the blast.

The corpses of half a hundred ships fell towards Tribute. The other half of the fleet had simply disappeared in the blast. Below, Tribute's atmosphere had been stripped from most of the planet, which now had a tail of burning gases. That meant there wasn't much air resistance to slow down the corpses of the Covenant fleet, but it also meant they wouldn't burn up.

The ironically named _Light of the True Faith_, 'Lacamee's CSO-class supercarrier, was little more than a streak from the surface just about until it impacted. The multi-million ton ship dug a massive furrow into the surface, but the remnants of the ship's artificial gravity managed to preserve the lives of those few left intact by the terrible Psykery.

Fleetmaster Syra 'Lacamee awoke, which was in itself a surprise. His last memory was the most terrible feeling he'd ever felt… he shivered.

Best not to dwell on it now. He attempted to rise, but felt a sharp pain in his legs and hissed. He fell onto his back.

From beyond his line of sight, he heard a laugh in the human fashion. It sounded off, though - layered and cloying.

The laughing figure stepped into his view. They were wearing a mask of some sort, but the detail that stood out to him most was the ears. Their ears stuck up nearly [half a foot, and terminated in a sharp point. This was no human.

The figure removed its mask. 'Lacamee hissed as a human face looked down at him, even if it was oddly proportioned.

"You are the ones who destroyed this world. We saw you, using your primitive energy weapons on the Mon'keigh cities." 'Lacamee didn't bother to protest. It was true. The human-thing smiled.

"Perfect. We have need for one such as you…"

The Fleetmaster's vision faded to black once again.

High above the surface of Tribute, a massive rip in reality swirled in ways no mortal mind could see, much less understand. The hole grew as the seconds went by. So far, only two groups had come across it, but who was to say how long that state of affairs might last?

The Empyrean had come to visit, the Archenemy's forces finding themselves with a whole new universe to corrupt.

From the bridge of his cruiser, Warsmith Kvedrax smiled, his cracked face shedding skin and fluid from the unfamiliar action.

Abaddon would soon be the second-most worthy of the title "despoiler."

* * *

The sheer awesomeness and capability of 40k ships doesn't really track with their canonical sizes. Nor do their displacements work with their sizes - there's no way a multi-billion-ton Imperial Battleship is 8 kilometers long while carrying millions of crew. Thus, the behemoth shown here. Mind, this isn't a battleship… nor is it Imperial.

Also, when I published this I tried to put it up under "Chapter 3.5." Apparently Fanfiction doesn't like punctuation in titles... so now it's the Interlude.

Finally, I was forced to read a few horror stories since the last chapter, so here's a disclaimer. I don't own Warhammer, the Iron Hands, Adeptus Astartes, or anything from that brand. I don't own Halo, the Sangheili, Tribute, Reach, or anything from _that_ brand. Please don't sue me. I have nothing to give.

Y'all don't need any encouragement, but if you see errors - tell me!


	5. Chapter 4

I'd like to start this chapter off with a huge thank you to the magnificent human being going by the name of RandomReader in my reviews. This generous soul not only corrected my inexcusable mistake of NOT RUNNING THE NUMBERS (what kind of Adept am I?) but did it in such a kind manner that I didn't even realize the magnitude of my mistakes until I finished. When I get around to continuing that particular plot thread, rest assured UNSC _Random Reader_ will play a significant part.

* * *

**552.M3**

**An escape pod high above Installation 04, Threshold, Soell System, Orion Arm, Milky Way**

For something over ten meters long, the escape pod felt remarkably cramped. Most of that was the pair of large metal suits in the center aisle - one hulking and black, and one sleek and green.

It didn't help that both were completely covered in gore and smelled horrible in the close confines of the pod. The larger one also had a massive harness on his back as well as several metal manipulators that seemed to move of their own volition, staring at the individual marines and navy personnel in sequence and spastically jerking when the escape pod hit turbulence.

Ferenk was completely oblivious to the discomfiture of the humans around him. Even if he had remembered his time as a Medusan mortal, Medusans were used to unpleasant close conditions, living in their cramped land-crawlers with the outside eternally trying to kill them; he wouldn't have sympathized. Now that he was not only Astartes, but an Iron Hand with four studs in his helmet, he hardly considered the "Marines" around him as more than pets.

Now that he had time, he was taking the opportunity to check his armor and weapons systems, ensuring that nothing had been adversely affected by the Warp magicks that brought him here. He went through his reactor, helmet, sensors, bionics, armor systems, and weaponry before turning to his cogitators.

Which promptly shot nearly a thousand warnings, many of them bright red and burning, and Ferenk realized that he hadn't thought to ask a single question of his computing facilities since the warp explosion.

The Master Chief, braced in between the two walls of the pod, saw the arms and manipulators of the "Iron Hand," as he'd introduced himself, suddenly go limp. The armor itself didn't move at all, remaining in the same posture it had since it had boarded the pod, but the red lights in the eyepieces flared then faded.

The fact that a Techmarine of the Iron Hands hadn't thought once that being devoured by a Warp phenomenon and sent Omnissiah-only-knows where might have affected his judgement was worrying. Ferenk near-instantaneously shut down every system in his armor, and most of his bionics not directly related to keeping his still-mortal brain functioning. He swore internally as without his cogitators he was suddenly free to think clearly.

**+++ACCESSING SIMULUS INLOADS+++**

_What? No! _Ferenk's armor had decided, of its own resources, that it would send Ferenk into simulus. The fugue state would make him dead to the outside world, unable to fight. And that could prove his undoing.

+++**SIMULUS INLOAD COMPLETE+++**

_By the Omnissiah._ His cogitators were shut down, unpowered. His armor was shutting down. What could be happening?

+++**ACTIVATING SIMULUS+++**

A battlefield sprouted around Ferenk, silent and unmoving statues building themselves from individual pixels. From the ground up, dozens of Xenos appeared out of nowhere. The battlefield was a mud-covered field. In the background, human-looking fighters and dropships duelled sinuous Xenos craft over a range of white-capped mountains.

Ferenk realized with a start that he could move. He turned around, hearing the reassuring whine of his armor actuators and feeling his cogitators clack to life, feeding him information about the battlefield surrounding him.

++_Unknown_ _Xenos detected. More inf-inf-inf-_++

The binharic voice of the cogitator system was cut off, stuttering, by a blast of advanced hexamathics. Ferenk's armor seized for a moment, and then the frozen battle came to life.

A dozen of the Kroot-like aliens turned towards him, bringing up their energy shields and firing packets of their compressed plasma at him. He brought up his weapons and prepared to engage them, but the plasma passed right through him.

He turned around, his massive armor creaking as its machine spirits protested their treatment, just in time to see the green-clad "Spartan" roll out of the way of the incoming shots.

A female voice, loud and brash, crashed into his mind, seemingly separate from the ongoing simulus. It spoke absolutely _horrendous_ High Gothic, but it was recognizable regardless.

"What think you, Iron Hand?"

The eldest Iron Hands tend to have essentially stopped forming new memories, instead choosing to depend on simulus of a million battles and sheer computational power to allow them to formulate a strategy on the fly. The oldest of the old are unable to distinguish between simulus of the past and the present.

Ferenk Verrn was centuries old, and a Techmarine to boot. He had chosen to take a different path to the Iron Fathers, however. Most of those on the Iron Council replaced their bodies, then memory, and then minds with the purity of the machine. It was required, after all, if one wanted to interface with the Eye of Medusa.

The Kristosian Conclave had dominated the chapter when Ferenk was inducted. By the time he left for Mars, a new voice had risen to oppose it: Kardan Stronos, Iron Captain of Garrsak. Vurgaan and Garrsak had always been somewhat close, but Stronos (formerly of Vurgaan) had brought that relationship to an apogee. He and Iron-Captain Verrox had changed the way simulus was used, moving away from using it as a substitute for tactical judgement and attempting to use it to _develop_ that judgement. Mirrored in that was the Stronos bloc's view on augmetics (a view widely condemned by the rest of the chapter as heterodox, if not quite heretical), a view that stated augmetics should be used to enhance and work alongside the Emperor's gifts, instead of replacing them.

_Techmarine_ Ferenk wasn't so sure on that last one, but he agreed with Stronos on all other subjects. He had been one of Iron-Captain Verrox's closest confidants within the company, once he had gone to Mars and seen the hollowness at the core of the Kristosian Creed he had once embraced. Ferenk had been on Gaudinia Prime, had fought Kristos' hordes. He had seen the Sapphire King slain.

Never since had he entered any form of simulus. Kristos' specialty and the mechanism of his control over nearly a third of the chapter was simply too much to bear after the death of friends and brothers at the hands of the Daemonic forces of the Emperor's Children.

It was too much like Istvaan.

So Ferenk hadn't replaced any part of his mind. His brain was, superficially, identical to how it was when he was inducted into the chapter. Of course, all the normal evolution of the brain had occurred, but it was still entirely baseline Astartes. He had ignored those dictates of Kristos when he was in power, despite his enthusiastic adoption of the Kristosian regard for bionics, and continued to when Kristos was dead and Excommunicate Traitors.

Not even simulus wasn't enough to dull the mind of Ferenk Verrn, biological as it was. He realized in moments that it was the same voice he had heard on the bridge.

"I am impressed. I did not suspect anyone in this area of the galaxy had the ability to invade Astartes power armor. Especially not one with as aggressive a Machine-Spirit as mine, praise the Omnissiah."

"I didn't. You let me in."

Ferenk thought for a moment. Not for long, though. "Brawn over brains" doesn't become a Techmarine. "Brawn over brains" doesn't even survive Medusa. You need both. Ferenk had them in spades.

"I brought down my code-blockers to check my own and you took the opportunity to hijack my armor. Clever." Then a thought occurred to him. "You are present. Does that mean you also have simulus implants?"

The voice audibly hesitated, attempting to start a sentence a few times before finally giving up.

"No. I'm a person, but not a physical person." Vague, but still, Ferenk came to the correct conclusion right before the voice said, "my name is Cortana, and I am an artificial intelligence."

* * *

First off, thanks for reading!

I've finally found the cure to the formatting issues that have plagued me, so expect less missing italics. Thank the Omnissiah! In other (related) news, I'm looking for a beta reader, so if anyone is interested, please let me know!

I just realized this entire chapter is set on the escape pod. I swear we'll actually hit Installation 04 next chapter, due out sometime between next month and next century.

One last note: If you have questions, comments, or criticism, please PM me! I'll respond to everyone I can, and realistically, that's everyone. Frankly, reader engagement makes me write faster, too.

**Second Note: **I wrote this right after chapter 3.5 came out. I wasn't and am not happy with it, but I gotta get something down to move on.


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